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Pandora FMS vs Splunk AppDynamics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 6, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Pandora FMS
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
40th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (41st), Server Monitoring (16th), Log Management (40th), Cloud Monitoring Software (28th)
Splunk AppDynamics
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
246
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (3rd), IT Operations Analytics (2nd), Mobile APM (2nd), Container Monitoring (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Pandora FMS is 0.5%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk AppDynamics is 3.2%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Gabriel Glusgold - PeerSpot reviewer
Personalized metrics; simplicity of data
My primary use case for Pandora is monitoring This solution has helped us improve our organization by allowing us to create a lot of metrics on several platforms, including Windows, Linux, and Unix. We then use these Pandora metrics to create an interface. We then pass the interface off to the…
Muhammad Zeeshan Siddiqui - PeerSpot reviewer
Dynamic mapping enhances workflows that are user-friendly
One aspect that requires improvement is the agent. Without an agent, gathering sufficient information on applications is challenging. Additionally, the agent sometimes creates performance issues in production environments. If AppDynamics could develop a means to monitor without an agent, it could significantly improve application performance and reduce potential problems. Moving to an agentless solution, like what some competitors are doing, would be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Features I have found most valuable with Pandora are the personalized metrics and the simplicity of data."
"It is easy to create your own custom modules if you just know a little bit of scripting. If you have unique requirements, you can just make your own modules. You can even grab checks from other vendors. There are open-source checks for various things such as SMTP, etc. There is a long list of different ones from Nagios. You can just use them, and within seconds, you get yourself a check that is monitoring whatever you need. It is really flexible. I guess that's why they call it Pandora Flexible Monitoring System (FMS). It is reliable. It does the job, and it alerts. It is also surprisingly feature-rich. Our network guy just recently asked about a particular protocol to monitor the bandwidth on the network, which is not a common protocol. When I looked it up, and I found that they cover it. It is very mature for a not-so-known product."
"This product has allowed us to identify and correct certain issues that were affecting our solution."
"The monitoring system within this solution is very good. It is easy to use and navigate, and makes issue alarms easily viewable."
"The network monitoring and configuration within this solution is very good."
"The solution has good dashboards and graphics."
"What I value most about Pandora FMS is the simplicity of working with it."
"The official forum is active enough to answer most of the high-end technical questions that you may have."
"We were able to correct problems, which led to an increase in availability, time savings, and performance for our solutions."
"We can make custom alerts in our system for specific issues like high CPU utilization or application downtime."
"What I like the most about Splunk AppDynamics is the end-to-end observability for the application, along with traces."
"Splunk AppDynamics' infrastructure monitoring is satisfactory."
"AppDynamics is a good tool that offers excellent out-of-the-box dashboards and application topology."
"After we implemented this solution, we can easily determine the root cause of issues."
"Provides good overall application performance and transaction errors."
"In the case of a mobile banking application, AppDynamics Mobile Real-User Monitoring successfully reduced the response time from eight seconds to just one second. In another example, the tool identified an issue within the mobile app, causing lost transactions in the billing system."
 

Cons

"Pandora FMS is relatively new, and the interface with the older version crashes at times. We have several different operating systems, such as Linux and Windows, and Pandora does not run as well in these."
"This solution requires proper training to get 100% out of it."
"I would like for the solution to be faster and have a better tolerance between parallel servers for Pandora and Pest Control."
"The price for Pandora FMS is expensive."
"An update to the Android app would be appreciated."
"A nice feature in the next release would be an automation module to run workflow actions."
"I sincerely believe that Pandora needs new ideas for functionality closer to advanced device security monitoring."
"Pandora FMS is an overall great monitoring solution, but it does not have a community that is as large as Zabbix or Nagios."
"The challenge in the installation is that you have to configure a lot of things manually. The way you install and configure it is not straightforward."
"I would like to see more of a unified platform. They're very, very new on the server side, machine agents. I want them to be more mature in this area."
"AppDynamics Database Monitoring would be a better product if it could support new technology, such as cloud technology. Even Dynatrace lacks support for newer technologies."
"At this time, we don't have much visibility on the virtual environment, monitoring, and all other things. We have visibility only for database monitoring, and we have noticed performance impact when deploying database agents on the database server. We got to know this from AppDynamics support also that we should not deploy database agents from the database server. When agents are deployed on the same server and the database is monitored from there, we are not getting database server metrics. Therefore, we don't have those insights, and sometimes, we struggle because of that. They can improve this functionality so that we do not have a performance impact, and we can deploy anywhere. This would help us a lot. In terms of end-user monitoring, currently, it is not working for us because there are some complexities. It is a little complicated, and it takes a little bit of time to understand where you need to make changes. It would be very helpful if they can provide some template designs for end-user monitoring. When our servers are running on VMs, we don't get many insights from the VM side. I don't know whether it is possible to have visibility beyond the database, server, and application and whether there are some features where we can deploy AppDynamics on VMs as well. Such functionality would give us more control over storage, VM, OS, and database. It will also provide complete visibility of our hardware and software."
"AppDynamics Database Monitoring would be improved with more support for microservices architecture."
"I am not very impressed with support. The service could be better."
"It would help to maybe have a more graphical interface and more user-friendly graphics."
"AppDynamics is agent-based, so some customers are reluctant to install the agents in all their production environments. It would be helpful if they had an agentless version. It covers applications on the server, but the solution is weak on the network side. The agent is not deployed on the network components, so it cannot provide complete information about issues on the network layer."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pandora FMS is easy to implement and the pricing of licenses is competitive."
"My rule of thumb would be that if you need more than thirty agents, and you lack an automation tool such as Chef or Puppet, you will save a lot of time and money going to the Enterprise edition."
"You get the license and it includes updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of modules."
"They are very competitive on the pricing side. That's one reason why my manager keeps using it."
"Only one payment and it includes support, updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of plugins except for SAP and z/OS."
"You have to pay for the number of agents and models that you are monitoring. I would rate the cost at three with one being the most expensive and five being the cheapest."
"Growing the solution or migrating to the Enterprise version is easy, and various plans are available."
"The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
"Pricing is based on the size of the deployment."
"It could be cheaper. It's a little cost prohibitive. There are so many features that also show a lot of value, but it’s not always easy to justify the cost."
"AppDynamics is what I would consider an enterprise-level solution. This means that it's a solution that is intended for use by larger organizations, while small or medium-sized businesses may find it difficult to afford. The number of agents required will also impact the pricing, and smaller companies may only be able to afford a limited number of agents. Essentially, the cost of the solution is not within the reach of every organization, and only some may be able to afford it."
"You are required to purchase licenses whether you use it or not. It is not pay-as-you-use."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"The license fee for Application Analytics is in the range of 2.5 million over three years, with extra fees for service contingencies."
"The product’s licencing policy is competitive. However, properly identify and size your needs to get the best rate."
"It's a very expensive product. Each of the licenses after this month for one server is around $9,000 or $10,000."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
9%
Media Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
47%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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Any advice about APM solutions?
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Sample Customers

Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
Cisco, Sony, Nasdaq, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Edmunds.com, Puma, Fox News, DirecTV, Pizza Hut, T-Systems, Cornell University, OpenTable, BITMARCK, Green Mountain Power, Care.com, Overstock, Paddy Power, eHarmony, Kraft, The Motley Fool, The Container Store, and more See more customers
Find out what your peers are saying about Pandora FMS vs. Splunk AppDynamics and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.